Re: Hessen
Originally posted by TAF
To Satan---It was very unnecessary to attack and devour Hessen. I politely asked you not to do it, and you ignored me. I can only assume that you thought Sweden was so helpless one-on-one that you had no need to consider listening. Sweden is too weak to take on the Netherlands one-on-one but we all knew a general war was coming. It is silly, I think, to just insist that you "needed" these provinces.
It was obvious that an all-out war was coming any day, and you seemed to go out of your way to antagonize Sweden. Sweden may be rather weak economically, but its land tech and army are not negligible, and it was completely pointless, in my opinion, to piss it off for a dubious "necessary" land grab.
In addition, you indicate that we had agreed on spheres of influence long ago. Your memory is not accurate. You INFORMED me long ago, that my sphere of influence was in eastern Europe beyond the Elbe, which leaves all of Germany to you. I specifically and vociferously disagreed then, as I do now and always will.
I believe that the attack on Hessen was a serious mistake on the part of the Netherlands. I was considering my options, and actually had other ideas in mind, until the Hessen fiasco. After that, I was determined to join or support whatever coalition the Netherlands was NOT in, and see what could be done about Dutch arrogance.
I think that France and the Netherlands discounted the East completely and made a serious, and probably fatal, error in so doing. I certainly never received any overtures from either power, only attacks from the Dutch---it can't be any surprise that Sweden entered the war against the Dutch as soon as possible, as the Hessian land grab guaranteed my entry.
You may say my entry into the war was "mindless" and it may very well be that I have no mind
, but my entry makes perfect sense to me, as should the entry of Poland. Austria is inscrutable, as always.
I never said it was mindless, and I never saw any requests not to attack Hesse. However, I did see your allying Hesse initially (the first war with Hesse) to be a deliberate provocation, but I just assumed that you had been bought long ago by Spain.
I made no attempt to touch Brandenburg, which clearly is in your influence, but if you don't think the Reform provinces around the Rhine are more in my sphere than yours, I don't know what you're smoking. Also, it was quite clear that Hesse expanded at the expense of my vassal.
I guess we will just agree to disagree, but Hesse was never your ally until you joined them after Austria's doW and the English/French treachery. You showed then your hostile intent, despite much that Holland attempted to do for Sweden in the past.
If you can't see why I wanted a land connection to Palatinate I'm not sure what game you're playing... not EU2 that's for sure. It may not be your fault that I lost that connection in the first place, but you were clearly trying to hinder me, not help yourselft, which is a pretty hostile action. Don't pretend you were going to stay neutral when you had already attacked me by allying with Hesse during the first gang-bang.
Edit - I didn't mean the above to sound harsh, but clearly I needed a land connection to Palatinate, and the only way to do that was through Hesse. In unreasonably trying to prevent this you showed that you were obviously going to attack me anyway. I certainly never discounted any nation in this game, and for the most part tried to help those who were behind (Austria for instance, Sweden and Russia when they were attacked by Poland, OE, etc). If I wanted hostilities with Sweden I would have pushed that previous war further.
Edit #2 - Sweden
informed me that it's sphere of influence was all the ports on the Baltic. I accepted that.
Edit #3 - I'm far from saying that I played a perfect game, or even a good one, but I don't think I made a mistake here, or took anybody too lightly. I would say in hindsight that I made a big mistake a long time ago in backing an ally and friend at the time (England) even if only diplomatically, against a friend (Sweden). Since then I haven't seen much of an attempt from Sweden to do anything but destroy me, though it seems that England was the one that caused much of Sweden's problems.
